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Posts Tagged ‘Coffee’

Never Appease A Bully

Posted in Economics, Philosophy, Politics, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , on January 27, 2025| 3 Comments »

IMHO:  Colombian President Gustavo Petro made an error in capitulating to U.S. President Trump’s demand to allow the repatriation of Colombian migrants under the threat of imposed tariffs and sanctions.  What he should have said was:  “Bring it on!“
Approximately 20% of the coffee imported into the United States is from Colombia.  Approximately 66% of Americans drink coffee everyday.  President Trump’s threat was to raise the price of coffee for Americans (who would be paying the tariff) if Colombia didn’t agree to receive their citizens back.
Some of the main exports from Colombia to the United States are:
Crude Oil:  This is the largest export, valued at around $6 billion annually.
Coffee:  Colombia is one of the world’s top coffee producers, exporting nearly $1.8 billion worth of coffee to the U.S. each year.
Cut Flowers:  Colombia is a major supplier of cut flowers, with exports totaling approximately $1.6 billion.
Gold:  Precious metals, including gold, are also significant exports.
Bananas:  Another important agricultural export.
All of these are essentially fungible goods on the world market – meaning they are completely replaceable by similar goods from other suppliers (countries) if there is a significant price hike.  But when the price hike is only in one country, imposed on that country by its own government, the price hike need not cripple the tariffed country’s economy.  They can still sell their goods to other countries.
Yes, there is no doubt tariffs would have a significant hit on Colombia’s exports to the United States.  The counter to this is there would be little to no impact on Colombia’s exports to other countries who aren’t imposing a tax on their own citizens for your products.  The price of crude oil (gasoline), coffee, flowers, gold and bananas would go up in the United States for the long term, but the effect on Colombia would be short term at worst.  Columbia might have to reduce their prices – for other parts of the world – to maintain their economy / market share during the price stabilization fluctuation, but it is hard to believe this would be a long term hit (except to flowers and bananas due to spoilage which may cause the loss of profit for the majority of that season’s product).
The reality is that many (if not most) of the other countries involved in those markets / exports to the U.S. would also raise their prices to increase profit knowing the tariff will provide market-message protection for their price gouging.  This is the nature of global capitalism…  They don’t HAVE to increase their prices by the amount of the tariff, but I can easily see them increasing by 10-to-15% and laughing all the way to the bank.
This will result in a “mild” round of inflation in the United States and (potentially) an increase in the Federal interest rate to fight the inflation.  So, who really, really gets hurt?  The American consumer…  when (if) our economy tanks!
President Petro should have called #47DonTheFelon’s bluff.  The emperor has no clothes.  The sooner some other global leader points this out, the better / safer the global economy will be.
Reality Check:  Although the Colombian numbers above are in the billions of dollars, it should be pointed out they are “almost” insignificant for the overall U.S. economy which is $25+ Trillion per year.  The issue is there is no way to know in advance when any given economic factor will (or is likely to) become a tipping point for the U.S. economy.  President Trump’s “poker play” is that you are more afraid of damage to your economy than he is is of the damage to our economy.
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Click here (27 January) to see the posts of prior years.  I started this blog in late 2009.  Daily posting began in late January 2011.  Not all of the days in the early years (2009-2010) will have posts.

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My Birthday Wish For You

Posted in Faith Family and Friends, Family and Friends, Philosophy, Quotes, tagged , , , , , , , on October 29, 2023| Leave a Comment »

Smell the roses.  Smell the coffee.  Whatever it is that makes you happy.
    —     Rita Moreno
Happy Birthday, Hil!!  May I always make you smile (or at least shake your head)…
All my love,
Always!
Your Kev
XXX
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X
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Click here (29 October) to see the posts of prior years.  I started this blog in late 2009.  Daily posting began in late January 2011.  Not all of the days in the early years (2009-2010) will have posts.

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Some Of Us Sit Quietly (Indoors), Read And Drink Coffee

Posted in Humor, Philosophy, Quotes, Reading, tagged , , , , , , , , , on January 31, 2023| 2 Comments »

On vacations:  We hit the sunny beaches where we occupy ourselves keeping the sun off our skin, the saltwater off our bodies, and the sand out of our belongings.
    —    Erma Bombeck
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Click here (31 January) to see the posts of prior years.  I started this blog in late 2009.  Daily posting began in late January 2011.  Not all of the days in the early years (2009-2010) will have posts.

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9 (40) Redux – And Tips To Make It Through The Day

Posted in Diets, Health, Philosophy, Water Fast, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on May 18, 2022| Leave a Comment »

[Disclaimer:  Please remember I am NOT a medical professional and the “tips” in this post are based on my anecdotal experience(s).  Consult your personal physician before starting any diet or exercise regime.    —    kmab]
My last 40hrs water fast did not go well.  I didn’t complete the 40hr;  I only made it about 19 – 20hrs.  On the “full-day” portion of the fast, I had a late morning doctor’s appointment and some shopping chores.  The sum of this left me tired and HUNGRY.  I ended up breaking the fast just after noon.  Then I didn’t want to start over at 5pm, so I carried on normally through yesterday and started over at 6pm.  Today is the “new” 9th cycle full-fast day.
Why 6pm instead of 5pm?  LoL…  I took a nap and over-slept.  I was reading.  I felt tired.  I donned my CPAP mask and closed my eyes…  Next I knew, it was 4:55pm and I’d not eaten my dinner.  So, I rushed a couple of dogs onto the boil and had a cup of mint chip ice cream for dessert.  (Yes.  I know it’s a heck of a diet…)
My tips for successful short water fasts:
1)  Get the start time right…  Breakfast and lunch don’t matter, but you’ve got to be organized or you’ll never get the dinner cooked and eaten by the 5pm start time.  The later the start time, the later the end time.  (You want to end as close to getting up as possible.)
2)  Stay up a little later on the start day / evenings.  You’ve eaten a couple of meals that day and staying up a bit longer isn’t that much more difficult (hunger / eating wise).
3)  If you are allowed to…  sleep in a little later on the full fast day.  The less time you are awake, the less time you have to think about eating.
4)  Coffee / tea:  I drink a LOT of coffee – about 60 fluid ounces between getting up and 2 “ish” pm – on the full-fast day.  Coffee is a mild appetite suppressant and the volume makes your stomach “feel” full – which may itself BE the appetite suppressant.
The stomach doesn’t have a calorie gauge.  It does have a volume gauge.  If you eat (or drink) a lot, your stomach will tell your brain to turn off the hunger hormones simply because you are full.  The gauge doesn’t know about calories, proteins, carbs, nutrition, sugar, or any of that.  It only knows full, not empty and empty.  And it seems to have a bit of a delay processing between switching from “not empty” to “full”.  For most folks this delay seems to be about 15 to 30 minutes.
The “interesting” thing about black coffee is it gets to be an acquired taste.  I’ve been drinking “stand-up” coffee for about 40+ years and Bailey’s coffee most Saturdays for the last 20 years, so straight-up black coffee was something I had to adjust to.  Now, I must admit, I prefer it to my normal coffee.  (Although, I still enjoy my Saturday’s Bailey’s.)
Some readers may be asking:  “What’s a ‘stand-up’ coffee?”
A “stand-up” coffee is when you add enough CoffeeMate and sugar to your coffee so the plastic stirrer stands-up in your mug.  Super sweet / super creamy.  (And, yes, I have had people ask if I want a little coffee with my sweetened creamer.)  For those of you who may foolishly think to try this at home, I stopped it about 30 years ago when I developed kidney stones.  I (perhaps falsely) attributed the stones to the powdered creamer.   In any case, I’ve not used powder for well over 20 years and I still get kidney stones (grains).
5)  Take a nap on the full fast day.  I’m not a big “bed-napper” myself.  I’m more of TV watching me in the easy chair for a half-hour napper, but it does make the day go by faster.  The simple fact is most of your burned calories is your BMR (Basal Metabolic Rate) – how many calories you burn just to stay alive – and those get burned whether you’re awake or asleep.  And, I’m generally not aware of food / hunger when I’m asleep.
6)  Avoid watching sports on TV.  Sports are on TV to sell you cars, booze and food.  And, not necessarily in that order.  Except at dinner time:  then all TV is off limits – for the same reason, but mostly take-out food ads.  If you have to watch the evening news – watch public broadcasting.
7)  At meal time, go sit outside or to the far end of your house (away from the kitchen / dining area) when everyone else is eating.  It’s much easier to not feel hungry if you don’t smell the food cooking, being eaten, or lingering in the air.
8)  Drink at least two 8oz glasses of water in the evening.  I drink about 6pm and 8pm.  It fills the tummy a little and helps move anything in your digestive tract from the prior day.  Plus water is just good for you and most people don’t drink enough of it.
9)  You should probably “break fast” the following day with something healthy.  I almost never do.  Mea culpa, mea culpa… but it’s the truth.
10)  And this is probably the most important tip:  Lighten up and learn to forgive yourself.  If you don’t make it through the day – who really cares?  You are NOT a personal failure (in life or even “just” dieting) just because you didn’t make it through the day.  Your imagined state of self-discipline (or lack thereof) is just that:  imagined!  Eat slowly.  Enjoy the flavor(s) and the sensations of eating (smells, tastes, fullness, company) and being alive.  Start again tomorrow (or soon).
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Click here (18 May) to see the posts of prior years.  I started this blog in late 2009.  Daily posting began in late January 2011.  Not all of the days in the early years (2009-2010) will have posts.

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Day 15: Die By The Scale

Posted in Diets, Health, Juice/Blend Fasting, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , on September 13, 2019| 2 Comments »

The end of day fifteen and the morning of day sixteen…  Live by the scale, die by the scale.
Morning weight:  355lbs.  (on Day 16)
I am up / down “3 / 18”.  As in, 3lbs up from yesterday and 18lbs down from my fasting start weight:  373lbs (the morning of Day 1).
As bad as it may be (for a dieter) to hit a plateau, it’s psychologically MUCH worse when you have a day to day gain.  One pound?  Okay.  Three pounds?  WTF?  (Pardon my language / expressions.)  Three pounds is either a healthy meal or it’s almost a half-gallon of water (or similar density fluid).  Since I didn’t eat and I don’t feel bloated (water retention), the most reasonable two explanations are:  1)  I’ve accidentally moved the scale, so it’s giving different readings;  or, 2)  the universe is unkind and / or unjust.  (I prefer to think it’s the second option.)  To make it even more painful, the scale wasn’t “bouncy”.  The needle was stable.
Now, please recall I take my weight two ways each morning:  forwards and back.  This means I stand in almost the exact same spot each morning, but on “forward”, I bend my knees slightly and lean as far to the front as I can while maintaining full foot contact, but with my weight shifted fully onto my toes.  For the “back” weigh-in, I straighten my legs and tilt as far back on my heels as I can without falling off of the scale.  Again, I still keep my feet in full contact with the scale.  This gives me (respectively) my high and my low weight for the day.  The two weights tend to vary about 5 to 7 pounds (as much as 10, but so far never less than 5), and they also tend to vary between themselves.  By this I mean, they don’t usually both go up or down the same number on any given day.  It’s usually 1 and 2 or 2 and 1.  I’m not saying they don’t.  I’m saying it’s far less common for them to correspond.  Today they both increased by 3lbs from yesterday’s weigh-in.
Of course, I have to consider what I may have done different yesterday from any other day.  Off the top of my head, I can only think of two things:  1)  I had a mug of black coffee in the morning;  and,  2)  I had more fruit juice in my blend than normal.  The day before I was a bit fed up with the taste of the blend and I felt a bit down on my energy level.  I countered that yesterday by adding more juice and less ice to the blend mix.  This was probably somewhere between 8 to 12 ounces of juice.  It is certainly possible the extra fructose contributed to the weight gain.  It’s hard to imagine it to have been the black coffee.
About sugar (well, about fructose) –  my understanding is sugar doesn’t (by itself) cause water (fluid) retention.  What sugar does is promote an increase in insulin (there’s that hormone again) which causes the body to retain sodium (salt), which in turn causes you to retain water.  The body has a very narrow band of tolerance for sugar (glucose in the bloodstream) which is maintained by increasing or decreasing the amount of insulin in the body.
About the coffee – I tried adding the coffee because the intermittent fasting book I just read said it was okay to drink black coffee or unflavored (black or green) tea – or plain water, and it wasn’t considered “breaking” your daily fast period.  I have never had coffee or black tea while on a fast before (in over 35 years) as removal of caffeine (like sugar) is usually one of the targets of a “cleansing” fast.  I have had herbal teas before while veggie broth fasting (over 30 years ago), but never while on a veggie-juice or veggie-blend fast.  My expectation was that it would make the hairs on my forearms stand up.  Surprisingly, it did not.  I also don’t feel like I got my usual coffee “buzz” –  that “ahh” sensation.  We drink Folger’s ground coffee at our house.  It struck me as fairly bitter.  Not as bad as back in my (ancient) memory of my Army days, but nowhere near as enjoyable as my sugar / half-and-half / Bailey’s Irish Cream.  Most of the year, I only drink coffee on the weekends.  This last year, with joining Costco and paying only 2/3rds the price for Bailey’s, I’ve been going through a pot-load of coffee on any given day.  (A pot-load is between 10 and 12 cups of brewed coffee.  The Bailey’s and half-and-half are on top of that.)
Ultimately, there is little to no chance to guess or deduce what may have caused the “bump”.  All I can do is continue down the path for a day or two and see if it really is an aberration or if something has fundamentally changed.  I just finished my morning (10:30am) mug of black coffee.  I guess we’ll see what we see tomorrow…  The next step will be to eliminate the coffee and see what that does.  Time will tell (or not).
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Click here (13 September) to see the posts of prior years.  I started this blog in late 2009.  Daily posting began in late January 2011.  Not all of the days in the early years (2009-2010) will have posts.

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Keep America Great – Vote This Tuesday

Posted in Politics, Quotes, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on November 1, 2018| Leave a Comment »

If something is presented as an accepted truth, alternative ways of thinking do not even come up for consideration.
     —    Ellen Langer
[To start off, #IncompetentDonald hasn’t made America great again.  He wouldn’t know where to start or how to go about doing it even if he really wanted to make it happen.  So, to now claim  he’s “done” it (made America great again), and now wants to be re-elected to keep it that way, is even more laughable.  (Yes, we haven’t even had the mid-terms and #DonTheCon is already running for re-election.)  It reminds me of “W” standing in front of his “Mission Accomplished” banner at the start of the Iraq war (1 May 2003).  We are still there (in Iraq and Afghanistan) over 15 years later…  If you are not in the 1% which the Republican tax cut greatly benefited, ask yourself:  “Will I be better off without healthcare and with reduced Social Security and Medicare coverage?”  That is surely where we are headed if Republicans retain control of both Houses of Congress.  John McCain is gone.  Obamacare will go down if there is another Republican controlled vote to kill it.  The tax cut has already worsened the federal debt AND deficit, and despite their claims they will protect Social Security, Republicans are already targeting “entitlements” (SSA and Medicare benefits) in their rhetoric.   How long will it be before they are reducing benefits in their legislation?  America, it is long past time to wake up and smell the coffee.    —    kmab]
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Click here (1 November) to see the posts of prior years.  I started this blog in late 2009.  Daily posting began in late January 2011.  Not all of the days in the early years (2009-2010) will have posts.

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Coffee Crunch

Posted in Faith Family and Friends, Family and Friends, Humor, Work, tagged , , , , on December 27, 2017| 2 Comments »

A few nights back, I was chatting with my older daughter about funny things which happen at work.  She chuckled and said like teaching the boss to make his own coffee.  I asked what she was referring to.  She said a co-worker approached her one day and commented she was sooooo lucky to have a boss who didn’t expect her to get up and make his coffee for him.  The co-worker inquired how she managed it.
My daughter explained she didn’t actually.  She began working for her boss as an office intern while in high school.  Her only experience with adults drinking coffee up till then was her parents (my wife and I) drinking instant coffee.  When she was asked to make some coffee, she added a couple of spoonfuls of ground coffee to the pot, poured in some boiling hot water, and gave it a stir.  Voila!
She didn’t realize ground coffee went in a separate place and required a filter…
No one actually complained, but no one asked her to make a pot of coffee for quite awhile after that.
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Click here (27 December) to see the posts of prior years.  I started this blog in late 2009.  Daily posting began in late January 2011.  Not all of the days in the early years (2009-2010) will have posts.

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If They’re Good Enough

Posted in Quotes, Reading, tagged , , , , , on November 10, 2015| Leave a Comment »

You can never get a cup of tea large enough or a book long enough to suit me.
    ―     C.S. Lewis
[Actually, I prefer coffee to tea, but I fully understand the sentiment.    —    kmab]
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Click here (10 November) to see the posts of prior years.  I started this blog in late 2009.  Daily posting began in late January 2011.  Not all of the days in the early years (2009-2010) will have posts.

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Waiting In Line At Starbuck’s

Posted in Environment, Politics, Quotes, tagged , , , , , , , , on April 4, 2011| Leave a Comment »

When I visited coffee farms in Ethiopia, the farmers could not believe we spend a week’s wages in their country on a cup of coffee in ours…
    —    Colin Firth
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Click here (4 April) to see the posts of prior years.  I started this blog in late 2009.  Daily posting began in late January 2011.  Not all of the days in the early years (2009-2010) will have posts.

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